Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Comparison Of Mississippian Period Subadults From The Middle Cumberland And Eastern Regions Of Tennessee To Assess Health And Past Population Interactions, Rebecca Scopa Kelso

Doctoral Dissertations

Human subadult skeletal remains can provide a unique perspective into biosocial aspects of past populations. However, for a variety of reasons, they are often overlooked in the skeletal record. This is especially true for the Mississippian period (ca. 1000 years before present to ca. 400 years before present) populations that inhabited the Middle Cumberland region (MCR) and Eastern Tennessee Region (ETR). Most of the previous studies of these areas focused on adult skeletal remains, leaving out a large and extremely important population segment. To further expand current knowledge on the prehistory of the MCR and ETR, skeletal indicators of disease, …

A Flute Runs Through It, Sometimes… Understanding Folsom-Era Stone Tool Variation, Robert Detlef Lassen

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the “Folsom-Midland Problem,” in which two distinct varieties of stone projectile points occur together in many Folsom-age sites from the terminal Pleistocene in North America. In order to understand why these point types co-occur, a sample of measurements and photographs of 1,093 artifacts including points, preforms, and ultrathin bifaces has been amassed from 27 archaeological sites and three private collections across the Great Plains region of the United States. Analysis of the Folsom and Midland diagnostic artifacts from the Gault site in Central Texas provides the basis of subsequent analyses of the larger sample and indicates that …

The Revolution Before The Revolution? A Material Culture Approach To Consumerism At George Washington’S Mount Vernon, Va, Eleanor E. Breen

Doctoral Dissertations

Before the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) profoundly impacted the lives of colonial Americans, another revolution of sorts was taking place. This one occurred in the realm of the daily lives of all colonial Americans – free and enslaved, poor and wealthy. What made the 40-year period before the American Revolution unique was that access to consumer goods appears to have opened up for larger segments of the colonial population through a more sophisticated and far-reaching system of distribution for imported items. But just how equal was this access? What can be learned about colonial culture and the maintenance of power …

The Bioarchaeology Of Inka Resettlement Practices: Insight From Biological Distance Analysis, Jonathan Daniel Bethard

Doctoral Dissertations

The Inka Empire, known as Tawantinsuyu to those who lived there, achieved an imperial scale in less than one century. Since the Spanish Conquest, a tremendous corpus of literature has been published on the Inka by scholars representing multiple disciplines; these include relatively recent contributions from Andean bioarchaeologists.

This study contributes to Inka scholarship and an overarching bioarchaeology of empire through the bioarchaeological investigation of phenotypic variability of individuals recovered from locales which had been incorporated by the Inka. Few imperial edicts altered the Andean settlement landscape more than the Inka’s diverse resettlement strategies. Archaeological and ethnohistorical evidence suggests that …

The Tva Coal Ash Disaster And The Coal Calamity Continuum In Southern Appalachia, Erin Rae Eldridge

Doctoral Dissertations

Coal was once hailed as a means through which humans could free themselves from nature and enter a world of unending progress and growth. As a fuel for economic development, it has long been central to projects of capitalist modernity in the Appalachian South. It is also a resource that connects the central mining areas of the region to the development agendas of the Tennessee Valley. The 2008 disaster at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tennessee represents one of numerous calamities along the life cycle of coal in the region. The deluge of coal ash …

Medicalizing Suffering: Postsocialist Reforms Of The Mental Health System In Ukraine, Shelly Ann Yankovskyy

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores how mental health reforms in postsocialist Ukraine, specifically the push for privatized community mental health services, are playing out on the ground through provider and patient perspectives and are mediated by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). I argue that the international agenda promoted in Ukraine that pushes for western neoliberal political and economic reforms has produced cultural and structural discrepancies and tensions which can be seen in the mental health field. As major reforms are promoted, including the shift from state hospitals to private “community-based” services as part of a transition from socialized to privatized or insurance-based care, and …

The Post-Human Gamer: Reflections On Fieldwork In World Of Warcraft, Joshua Stephen Schendel

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation offers a longitudinal digital ethnography of a community of hardcore gamers who currently play, or have played, the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMO) World of Warcraft. The central theme embraces the challenge of identifying and voicing the emic perspective of these hardcore players, presenting them as individuals mediating their real lives (IRL, or "in real life") and virtual lives through social media and online multiplayer technologies, including the maintenance of relationships developed within the IRL and in-game spaces they inhabit. The dissertation offers a critical analysis of the hardcore gaming lifestyle as voiced by the gamers …

Striking Out And Digging In: A Bioarchaeological Perspective On The Impacts Of The Wari Expansion On Populations In The Peruvian Central Highlands., Christine M. Pink

Doctoral Dissertations

The Wari empire emerged near the present day city of Ayacucho, Peru around AD 600 and collapsed approximately 400 years later. There is no doubt that Wari influence was widespread in the Andes; however, the extent to which the empire successfully integrated regional territories is not as well understood. This study examined the impact of the rise and fall of the Wari empire on the structure of interaction between populations hypothesized to have been within its sphere of influence. The relative frequencies of cranial non-metric traits were used to explore biological affinities among 17 populations that lived during and after …

Paleodemography Of The Larson Site (39ww2) Cemetery: How Age-At-Death Methods Influence Model Estimation, Rebecca Taylor

Doctoral Dissertations

The Arikara are one of the last Native American tribes to have direct contact with Europeans. Prior to westward expansion of Euro-American settlers, the Arikara served as middlemen in a complex trade network that brought European goods to the Upper Plains in exchange for fur and food items. In the 18^th century with a growing European presence in the region, the Arikara experienced drastic bio-cultural and socio-political destabilization leading to population decline. However, these transitions are unclear because of limited written records prior to the early 19^th century. Several hypotheses have been proposed to account for the near …

The Power Of The Hula: A Performance Text For Appropriating Identity Among First Hawaiian Youth, Cesily Hong

Doctoral Dissertations

Hawaii is an exotic land with a rich history and a culture imbued with meaning, including the performing arts. Such facets of any land need to be understood and preserved for future generations. The most significant aspect of Hawaiian arts is the hula kahiko, a text in motion, which when performed displays the story of Hawaii's past. The hula was forbidden by Protestant missionaries in the 1820's and was reduced to near cultural extinction. As a result, many First Hawaiians do not clearly understand the richness of their own history. Without this understanding, it is difficult for them to have …